Pirate Missions are Broken

Don't think, sorry's easily said
Don't try, turning tables instead
You've taken lots of chances before
But I ain't gonna give any more
The Alan Parson's Project - Eye in the Sky

They're hard to run. I mean that's the easiest thing to say is wrong with them. Any amount of mission running tends to break your faction with pirates pretty badly. Once it's below a certain point, that's it. Added to that is the fact that if you don't control the 0.0 that they're held in, you're out of luck.

How would I fix it? Add Double Agents into the game. These would be agents with the opposing factions of the pirates. A Caldari double agent, for example, would give you either Caldari or Guristas missions. The agents would only offer you the missions once you'd acquired a certain personal standing with them. You'd have the choice to pick either mission type. You'd also still have to trek to 0.0 for the LP rewards.

I also think it would be pretty fun to have that added depth into the game.

What do you think?

ECM is Broken

If I had a million dollars
I'd build a treefort in our yard
If I had a million dollars
You could help it wouldn't be that hard
If I had a million dollars
Maybe we could put a little tiny fridge in there somewhere.
The Barenaked Ladies - If I Had $1000000

ECM is broken. There I said it. Thousands of others have been on the receiving end of an unlucky jam one time to many and have thought and said the same thing. Personally, the number of times I've been jammed out of a fight can be counted on one hand, and the last time someone tried to jam me it didn't work out so well for him. So why do I think ECM is broken if I've yet to be frustrated by it?

I've seen ECM work for my side more often than not, and it works too well. Lets compare it to the other two defensive Ewar modules, Sensor Damps and Tracking Disruptors.

Sensor Dampeners are effective on long range and short range boats. An inty has a short range to start with, and if you damp it down, it's gotta close in more than it might want. Missile boats trade damage for range, and with a range damp you take away some of it's advantage. The damps are next to useless alone when used on a recon. Most of them have high lock ranges but much shorter effective ranges, so dampening their lock range is a waste of time. There is also the added negative of being way beyond web range of what you damp. If he's fast enough, he'll just close the distance. Anyone can add a sensor booster to their ship as well, effectively canceling one of your damps.

So how about tracking disruptors? They're extremely useful when used on any turret based ship, nearly crippling some if used correctly. But if the fleet has a missile or drone boat you're out of luck, and can guarantee you'll be primaried. These are useful for tacklers, but once again there are modules that will nullify most of the effect of these.

Now lets look at ECM. Given absolute knowledge of the enemy gang's composition, you will always bring ECM if that's the option. Why? It's better across the board. If a ship you're facing doesn't carry an ECCM module, it will likely be permajammed. Even if he's using ECCM, there is still a good chance that it won't be able to affect the battle at all. ECCM merely lowers your chance of being jammed, instead of negating that chance completely.

So what's the difference beyond the lack of a proper counter? Well ECM is like a sensor dampener that turns your targeting range to 0. So why use range damps if you have these? ECM is like a tracking disruptor that turns your tracking or optimal to 0 as well, so why use tracking disruptors? It stops missile boats, it stops turret boats, it stops drone boats. It works equally well on all ship types. It is broken.

How do we fix it? You may've noticed the last time I did one of these I talked about how to fix cloaking. This time around I propose to fix ECM, but not by nerfing ECM itself. I want to provide a more direct counter.

Introducing the Frequency Disruptor.

The Frequency Disruptor would be a new midslot module that you can activate on any target you can lock. It should have an optimal and falloff similar to the Tracking Disruptor(with current skills affecting it as an ewar module). Decent skills will put that at around 70k optimal. It would come with a new base and specialization skill to improve it's cap usage and effectiveness, in line with the other defensive Ewar modules.

It should be scriptable to provide either bonus doubled if desired or to run unscripted to use both bonuses at half. It would work on Sensor Dampeners, Tracking Disruptors, and finally ECM. It would reduce Optimal and Falloff, or the strength of the reductions the module gives(in the case of ECM, it would reduce the strength of the jam).

Now if someone tries jam you, and you have one of these onboard, you can burn out of his effective range, and hit him with this. It is an actual counter, and will force ECM pilots to think harder about how they plan to fight. They still get an initial jam in on the ships they need too, but generally a fleet can make him run away or force him to close range to something a bit more uncomfortable.

ECM stops being an easy button but isn't nerfed to hell and back.

That's my idea. What's yours?

Cloaking Reloaded

Well, looks like I started a huge conversation and a fad of sorts last week.

Mynxee links me and as always that brings me some traffic.

A Mule in Eve talks about his ideas.

Prometheus, an old Alliance mate discusses it.

Black Claw misses the point completely.

Not only that but it's become something of a cool thing to post up discussion post for ingame mechanics. Ok not cool exactly, I mean Spectre's doing it, but he sucks.

There's also a fellow posting a discussion about Local Chat changes. If you read this regularly get me a link.

It's always nice to see a post of mine making ripples through the community. Thanks guys.

Cloaking is Broken

If I were the king of the world
Tell you what I'd do
I'd throw away the cars and the bars and the wars
And make sweet love to you
Three Dog Night - Joy to the World

I've given alot of thought to cloaking and it's inherent problems. I specialize in stealth bombers myself, so I feel somewhat qualified to talk on this subject. There are always simple solutions to the most complex of problems. Here's how I'd change cloaking to make it more fun, and more fair for everyone involved.

First, introduce cloaking signatures, which are much weaker signatures than most people are used to dealing with. It'll take an expert prober with very nice skills to track them down, it should require Deep Space Scanner Probes(and therefore astrometrics five). Once a hit is narrowed down, you'll warp on grid with the cloaked ship. You shouldn't warp in near enough to decloak it though.

Next up, a cloaking signature should show up on your directional scanner when you're on grid with a cloaked ship. They should be like probes, in that they won't show up at all on your overview. They shouldn't show up as brackets and should be unfilterable in the directional scanner. They'll be nearly impossible to track mid combat, since you'll have to pick them out of everything else.

What does this mean? It means that as long as you're online and paying attention, no one should be able to catch you if you're safed and cloaked. It means that ratters won't be able to stay safed up indefinitely in 0.0.(Say goodbye to macro ratters, CCP) It means that if you cloak coming off a gate but don't have a cov ops cloak you're going to be caught.

The cloak stops being an easy button.

Discuss.